The Null Device

And now, The Null Device's list of up-and-coming Melbourne bands and musical artists you may not have heard of but should check out:

• BAM BAM. They're somewhere between Transvision Vamp and 1960s garage rock, played really tightly with lots of charisma and stage presence. And they look hot too. They should make it big.
• City City City - About as close as you're going to get to seeing Neu! playing live. A juggernaut of non-stop krautrock-meets-postrock groove, with not one but two drummers. They sound better live than on CD.
• Light Music Club - An all-girl duo doing pop songs, with piano and vocals. Whimsically sensitive songwriting, classy arrangements (in places reminiscent of Coward or Bacharach), and Zoë has a lovely voice.
• The Rumours - Classic indie pop done well, with tight, jangly guitars, sensitive indie-boy lyrics and a groove you can dance to. The frontman is like Morrissey and Johnny Marr rolled into one.
• Season - Post-rock soundscapes you can immerse yourself with, with electric piano and guitars with the whole range of effects (from metal crunch to wah) used judiciously; like Mogwai scoring a David Lynch film.
• Talkshow Boy - A guy with a CD player full of homemade computerised glitch-pop beats, which he then sings stream-of-consciousness lyrics over, about polar bears, eskimos, his LiveJournal friends and the undead. Though he puts on a really entertaining show of it. Also see Service Station Youth, which is him and three other people doing a similar thing.

As this is a list of new bands people may not have heard of, I've omitted from this list many bands worth checking out which people probably know about.

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Last night, I went to Pony to see a few bands. First up were Ahkmed, a 3-piece who were somewhere between Neu! and Metallica. Well, mostly Metallica; they had a few moments of post-rock and krautrock-influenced grooves, but most of their set was a fairly adolescent grunge/metal, with a bit too many plateaux to grab me. Maybe, in time, they will become more interesting.

Next up were BAM BAM, who were really good; they played a sort of punky psychobilly power-pop with very tight musicianship and a lot of energy; the vocalist (who looks a bit like a punk version of a 1950s pinup girl) put on an over-the-top performance with a good deal of hair-flipping, eye-rolling, and shimmying around the stage, whilst playing guitar and delivering her vocals. All in all, the band powered through their set like a juggernaut.

Keep an eye on BAM BAM; they look like they're going places.

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